The Synnot children

The great charm of this group portrait is due to its energetic depiction of children at play and to the ingenious motif of the birdcage around which they gather. The sitters are the three children of Sir Walter Synnot (1742–1821) of County Armagh: Maria at the left, Marcus, shown kneeling at the right, and Walter at the centre. The two boys, in the manner of sitters in a van Dyck portrait, sport seventeenth-century fancy dress, but Maria’s costume is more austere and classicizing. The notable refinement in the drawing, and the polished handling of the paint, place this work firmly in the vanguard of the Neoclassical style.

Underlying the comeliness of these angelic players are deeper levels of meaning. Most explicitly, the poses and gestures refer to the Annunciation: Maria and Marcus recall Mary and the archangel Gabriel, while Walter refers to God the Father, with the dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Together the figures are combined in a pyramidal composition, characteristic of Joseph Wright of Derby’s depictions of children and deliberately recalling the High Renaissance altarpieces that Wright studied during his stay in Italy (1773–75). This rather heavy-handed iconography is accompanied by more convincing and intriguing themes introduced by the cage and the release of the dove. For, on another level, The Synnot children engages the viewer in speculation on the nature of freedom and captivity, a subject of great relevance in the period of intellectual enquiry known as the Enlightenment.

It is characteristic of Wright’s purpose that his birdcage, a mere children’s wickerwork plaything, is also a refined architectural construction of solidity and grace. The cage is the true object of Wright’s artistic attention and, with its door wide open, is the repository of the deepest meaning embedded in the work as a whole.

Text by Dr Vivien Gaston from Painting and sculpture before 1800 in the international collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, p. 129.